(Head office: Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture; President and CEO: Hitoshi Kobayashi; hereinafter "Benesse Holdings") and Benesse Corporation (Head office: Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture; Representative Director: Hitoshi Kobayashi; hereinafter "Benesse Corporation") have entered into a business alliance agreement that includes capital participation. (headquartered in Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture; Hitoshi Kobayashi, President and CEO; hereinafter referred to as "Benesse Corporation"), including capital participation.

Purpose of the Capital and Business Alliance

With a management philosophy of "changing the world with the power of EdTech," we are an EdTech startup that aims to create more educational opportunities not only in Japan but around the world. Our main business, "learningBOX", is focused on ease of use and low cost, and since its launch in 2016, it has been chosen by many individuals and companies, with 17,000 registered users and more than 800 paying subscribers (as of the end of July 2022). In July 2022, after 10 years since its establishment, the company changed its name to "learningBOX Corporation" to clarify its management policy of focusing on the learningBOX business and to accelerate its business growth.
As a SaaS product in the EdTech field, "learningBOX" has received a certain level of support for its functionality and convenience through continuous functional modifications since its service launch. We will continue to further promote our product development activities with the aim of becoming a "global platform for learning" to realize a society in which anyone can learn what they want to learn anytime, anywhere and as much as they want.
Through this capital and business alliance, we will mutually utilize our technological capabilities in the education domain and Benesse Corporation's accumulated know-how in the school and educational fields to develop services that will enhance the learning effect more than ever for teachers and students throughout Japan and for learners around the world. We will continue to focus on expanding the scope of our development activities.

Details of Capital and Business Alliance

(1) Details of the business alliance
The two companies will jointly develop systems and services by mutually utilizing learningBOX's technological capabilities in the education domain and Benesse Corporation's know-how accumulated through its business development in schools and educational settings. The two companies will also aim to provide services that meet the needs of CBT for the utilization of educational data at schools.
(2) Details of capital alliance
learningBOX will issue new common shares through a third-party allotment to Benesse Holdings.

Benesse Corporation comments

Benesse Corporation
Ippei Hisatomi, General Manager, Common Platform Development Office

learningBOX is headquartered in Tatsuno City, Hyogo Prefecture, near our Okayama headquarters, and attracts many engineers from all over Japan who are attracted by President Nishimura's technical expertise. LearningBOX, the learning management system that is also the company name, allows companies and general users to create quizzes and questions on the web in a simple, easy, and quick manner, and to utilize learning data. We are very pleased to have entered into this capital and business alliance with learningBOX, as we share the company's commitment to the technology behind these services, its speedy response, and its commitment to putting user-friendliness first. We will continue to think about what we can do to advance learning in the ever-changing schools and businesses, and we will strive to contribute to the community and society by leveraging the mutual strengths of learningBOX and the Benesse Group.

Comments from the Company's Representative Director

learningBOX, Inc.
Representative Director Yoichiro Nishimura

Under our management philosophy of "changing the world with the power of EdTech," we have developed and provided e-learning systems that are easy to use and affordable.
We are very pleased to be working together with the Benesse Group, which has always been a leader in the industry. We are confident that we will be able to develop services that will help create an environment for better education by leveraging the strengths of both companies. We will create a future in which it is commonplace for anyone in the world to be able to freely learn what they want, when they want, wherever they want, and for as long as they want.

Benesse Holdings, Inc.
Benesse Holdings is a corporate group that provides lifelong support to motivate and solve problems for each of its customers in the fields of education, language, lifestyle, and nursing care, based on the corporate philosophy of "Benesse = Live Well. Benesse Corporation is Japan's largest provider of correspondence education services for infants through high school students, including Shinkenzemi and Kodomo Challenge, and school education support services such as Shinken Mock Exams, Study Support, and P-Study. Benesse Style Care Co.
https://www.benesse-hd.co.jp/

learningBOX, Inc.
Changing the world with the power of EdTech. With the philosophy of "changing the world with the power of EdTech," we develop and operate "learningBOX," a learning management system that focuses on ease of use and low cost, "QuizGenerator," a quiz and question creation tool that anyone can use for free, and "CardGenerator," memorization cards on the web that can be easily created from text. By using the power of EdTech to build a "global platform for learning" that pursues ease of use and low cost, we will contribute to the realization of a society in which anyone in the world can freely learn what they want, whenever and wherever they want, for as long as they want.
https://learningbox.co.jp/